Using a wire saw apparatus known in the art is a typical technique to slice a workpiece, such as a silicon ingot, into thin wafers. Such a wire saw apparatus slices the workpiece simultaneously at several spots on the workpiece by pressing the workpiece against a cutting wire which is spirally wound around multiple wire guides, while running the cutting wire.
Moreover, for example, a wire saw apparatus disclosed in PATENT DOCUMENT 1 carries out cut-machining on a workpiece by causing a wire guide (i.e., a workpiece roller) to run a cutting wire, and, simultaneously, causing the wire guide as well as the cutting wire to swing. Compared with a case where the cutting wire is not swung, this technique shorten the length of contact between the workpiece and the cutting wire, which can increase a cutting force to accelerate the cutting speed, and improve efficiency in ejecting swarf to achieve higher machining accuracy.